Earning free Avios points with pay.com virtual Visa gift cards (Part 2)

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• Rob says:

  15 Jul15 July 21:45

  Am I the only one who uses 3V to buy Sainsbury’s gift cards for my day to day shopping? Seems the easiest way to burn through them.

  • TimS says:

    15 Jul15 July 22:32

    So you go to Tesco to buy 3V cards, register them, convert to sainsbury gift cards and then shop in sainsburys?

    Doesn’t sound the easiest way to burn through them to me!

    Out of interest, do you use a shopping/employer discount portal to use the 3Vs to buy the sainsburys gift cards?
    If possible, that would give you a greater discount. (Sainsburys are normally around 3-4% discounted via such portals).

    • Nick says:

      16 Jul16 July 11:02

      If you do, please can you let me know which one you use? Mine does not accept 3v.

      • Gabriel says:

        4 Aug4 August 10:51

        The IBM portal powered by rewardgateway does accept them, but with a tight limit on the number of new cards you can use during a given time. Sainsburys gift cards have usually 5-6% discount, Boots 10-15%, Amazon 5%.

  • Fenny says:

    15 Jul15 July 23:04

    No, I buy Waitrose vouchers. Not only is there a Waitrose across the road from my Tesco with an excellent selections of gin, but you get the change in cash!

  • davef says:

    17 Jul17 July 21:39

    Yes,I do that. Asda ones too as that’s my local pop in for stuff I forgot store..

    Sainsburys is worth it because I’m getting Amex, Tesco and Nectar points for the one lot of actual spend plus it’s even better when sainsburys throw spend and save vouchers at me..

    Last summer was cool, Tesco Helping hand to buy 3v, convert to sainsburys and use their spend and save with the gift cards. Saved around 30% on every shop.

    I get them from HSV, don’t have access to any portals unfortunately.

    • Peter Taysum says:

      18 Jul18 July 10:19

      Sorry, what’s HSV? Thanks.

      • Rob says:

        18 Jul18 July 11:37

        High Street Vouchers site

  • dee jay says:

    21 Jul21 July 00:45

    yes its a good place to buy stamps from as well

• Simon says:

  15 Jul15 July 21:59

  Can anyone please kindly confirm if Santander HMRC Bill Pay are now taking pay.com/3v.

  I tried just under a year ago but wasn’t working for me. I hope it will work as better than what I’m doing at the moment!

  • Rob says:

    15 Jul15 July 23:09

    No. But the Worldpay HMRC site is. There are 2 different HMRC billpay sites.

• Furry says:

  15 Jul15 July 22:54

  I would avoid using them with OVO. While their system accepts them, they have investigated what they regarded as odd patterns of 3V card use. I received a call telling me that they had “4 or 5” people regularly paying in with the cards (this is quite a few months ago, before rebranding) and had found out that people were getting Tesco points on the back of that. This seemed to irk them, as if they were being “used”. They told me that they would immediately be refunding all cards I had paid in (back to the cards – logistical nightmare!), because the T&C said I needed to pay by direct debit. Actually their T&C did not specify that, but they insisted that the small single payment route was only for those whose finances were such that direct debit was not right for them. They then suggested that churning cards fell foul of money laundering regulations, meaning that they could not refund apart from back to the card itself (even if past direct debits more than covered the amount). They got quite shirty.

  My energy bills are pretty large, which is maybe why I had the problem. Perhaps smaller amounts trickled in each month will work. However I’ll not be trying again!

  • bob says:

    15 Jul15 July 22:59

    OVO 4 or 5 lol

    that’s me 🙂

    • bob says:

      15 Jul15 July 23:17

      and OVO just refunds to your direct debit (current) account

      • Toddy says:

        17 Jul17 July 10:08

        I had some issues with Ovo…. I had £6,000 credit in my account (from 3V) and received a call. The very fact that they offer 3% interest on credit balances encouraged me to do this.

        They wanted to refund back to the original cards, which I strongly objected to (nothing in their T&C’s)- he also mentioned that I could be money laundering but soon changed his tune when I advised that if he did genuinely suspect me of ML, then he had just broken the law by ‘tipping me off’.

        I left 1 year’s electricity payment in the account and got the balance refunded to my bank account.

  • Fenny says:

    16 Jul16 July 00:11

    I don’t think it’s down to a supplier to say how a customer can pay. I pay my BT bill by DD. But every so often, I have a 3V card, so I use that to make a prepayment on my account, as is perfectly acceptable, and it reduces my DD.

    As long as the 3V card is acquired legitimately and the supplier accepts debit card payments, there should be no reason why I can’t do it.

    Using a one off payment card for online transactions can be considered a security measure. Most of the people in my office have kids who have managed to rack up fairly hefty bills by being allowed to play on parent’s tablet with the credit card details entered. At least with a small limit on the card, it’s not going to be accepted when there’s no money left on it. Like the limit on contactless payments.

    • JQ says:

      16 Jul16 July 23:30

      It used to be 15% off!

    • Rebecca says:

      16 Jul16 July 23:53

      Good to know! I’ve just switched from virgin media to TalkTalk broadband and am awaiting my first bill! I tried to pay early but they said they couldn’t take payments until I got the first bill/went live on TalkTalk.

    • TheTraveller says:

      18 Jul18 July 22:22

      Of course it is absolutely correct for the supplier to say how a customer should pay – in certain circumstances. A lot of power suppliers offer a discount for those who pay by direct debit – as it keeps the admin costs down for the supplier. Why should customers be allowed to take advantage of the discount and then ‘use’ the supplier to cash-out gift cards, simply to gain the advantage of Clubcard points, whilst benefiting from a direct debit discount?

      On the other hand, if no direct debit discount is being applied, the customer should be at liberty as to how to pay – provided there are no Ts&Cs preventing the preferred payment method.

• Dee Jay says:

  16 Jul16 July 01:10

  Excellent post here with lots of useful information, will be bookmarking it to check back again!

• Rob says:

  16 Jul16 July 14:02

  Thanks

  • Polly says:

    16 Jul16 July 15:00

    Yasmin refers to you as her friend Rob over at HFP. In her May article! Honestly she’s just running a concurrent column, spreading the word big time! Esp about the pay.com. I can see things tightening up with these cards!

    • Waribai says:

      17 Jul17 July 14:37

      Yes, many of her British Airways articles look remarkably similar to HFP ones.
      Also amongst her ‘team’ of authors I’ve noticed very similar typos and errors.
      I am even dubious about her ‘auctions’ now!

  • Polly says:

    17 Jul17 July 18:21

    I read it in full,yesterday, and basically it was all repeated. As were the other ones ie the BA one etc. saying that I missed out on a luxury 3 night stay in HKT was outbid at the last minute. Looked like an inside job, as the bid suddenly went way up over what we were bidding. Very annoying, as I was the highest bidder all along! Anyway makes me wonder. What would happen if you won something and it didn’t exist. I actually called the resort to ask if they had donated the gift,mind they said yes. It’s great if you can win one of them.

• mij says:

  16 Jul16 July 14:58

  you can always kindly donate your odd amounts on your pay.com cards to my http://www.justgiving.com/mijshakmasum page for homeless people! Justgiving happily accepts!

• Steve says:

  16 Jul16 July 15:30

  Can confirm that they can be used for paying First Utility.

  Does anyone know how to or can you pay your NI using the card?

• Adam says:

  16 Jul16 July 20:37

  Hello

  Slightly off topic, but with reference to the O2 payments above, can anybody confirm if paying your O2 bill when you receive it cancels the direct debit that is taken later in the month?

  The O2 website says “The payment may not cancel any existing Direct Debit arrangements – so you may have another payment from your account this month.” Waiting on live chat for an answer has proven to be very painful! Thanks.

  • Reney says:

    16 Jul16 July 21:05

    Hi,

    I pay my o2 bill all the time with 3Vs. I always pay closely after the billing date and they don’t take the direct debit after. Not sure what happens if you pay too close to the direct debit date. Hope that helps.

    • Adam says:

      16 Jul16 July 21:42

      Thanks. My DD comes out on the 30th so I’ll experiment this month and see how I get on. Appreciate the reply.

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